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Social Construction Of Race

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When we talk about race it generally means the color of a person’s skin, or their physical traits. These traits can lead to them being a different religion, heritage and obviously race or skin color. Race has life-or-death consequences and we prove it to not be deterministic. Ethnocentrism is the judgment of others groups by one’s own standards and values (Conley 326.) Ethnocentrism is what explained why historical efforts were so biased. When speaking about race its people or a group of people that all have their own features, mainly physical and that sets them apart from each other. Everyone has their own ethnicity and that is something everyone has in common. Sociologists argue this construction concept that it’s something that was created to show …show more content…

Sociologist tries to show that race is not real and is made up, almost like it’s our imagination. That is social construction, they get you to think outside of the box and prove that we have made up perceptions. We perceive something as we see it, it’s how we grew up. An example of this would be skin color, which is race but, skin race is not always skin color. People that have darker skin normally come from warmer climates, leaving them with more pigment in their skin. But when a couple of different races gets married and wants to have kids, this leads to miscegenation which is essentially the “mixing of kinds” (Conley 331.) A father can be of darker race and from somewhere warm, while the mother is lighter and from somewhere warm as well. They can produce a mixed baby, darker skin toned, or lighter. Someone can have lighter skin and could have lived somewhere warm all their life, and their skin color

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This simple nine word quotation from Matshona Dhliwayo summarizes much of what Jane Elliot has spent her entire career trying to get people to understand. Watching the film, The Essential Blue Eyed, gave me an entirely new perspective on racism and in truth, showed how ignorant I had been. Jane Elliot is able to give study participants and viewers a completely new perspective on the social construction of race. According to the University of Minnesota, race refers to a category of people that share physical characteristics such as facial features and skin color (UMN 1).

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In the reading this week by Smedley and Smedley, the differences between ethnicity and race are discussed and the terms defined. Ethnicity is described as a group of people who have a common cultural trait, share a common language, area of origin, religion, and history (Smedley & Smedley 2005). The culture is learned, and is transferable to other people within the group (Smedley & Smedley 2005). Race is defined as physical features such as skin color or hair texture (Smedley & Smedley 2005). “Ethnicity was recognized as plastic, and transmissible, but race conveyed the notion of differences that could not be transcended” (Smedley & Smedley, 2005, p. 19).

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The concept of race has been around for a long time. Little did I know it was something that people created unconsciously. The film, “Race:The Power of an Illusion III” talks in depth about how race became a thing. For starters we know that the whole concept started when immigrants starting coming to the United States for freedom, opportunity, and the ultimate American Dream for them and their family.

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Since people moved around and spread their genes, our genetics are non-concordant, which means that they are not determined by one gene. If the colonial view of race was true, then everybody in the same race would have the same exact genes, but in reality, you're more likely to have more genetic similarities with somebody outside your race than within your race. Race is a construct that was made by colonial rulers in order to gain power over their subjects, but it still has very real consequences for those it has been used against. Race is a social construct that is still being used to maintain power over groups of color, although the time of colonization has come and gone and scientific advancements have come on to prove it untrue.

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Race and sociologic construction are viewed that way because sociologist believe that race is not only the color of our skin, but also how we were brought up. Our cultural differences and our environmental difference play a role on how we act. An example would be if you have a person of color, brought up in a small town with all Caucasian, that person will behave more like the Caucasian they are around. If you take a Caucasian and raise him or her in Mexico.

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One or the Other One of the many definitions that race has is: any contest or competition, especially to achieve superiority. Under a different context race is the way of classifying people based on their genetics; although they are different contexts in the real world both collide under the same context. Since, some people have the mentally that one race is superior to the other, even though no pure race exists. Zora Neale Hurston understands race as different color bags some of which have a priority in comparison to the other color bags. Her idea of race is similar to how I understand and have learned to see race because various individuals are discriminated against the color of their skin.

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Throughout history, men have created “race” not only to separate one group from another but also as a means of control. The dominant ideological group determines the identity and characteristics of other minority groups in order to diminish their status and to gain control over them. Omi and Winant explain to the readers that “one of the first things we notice about people ... is their race” (24). Many people use the race of people they first meet as a means to find clues about what type of personality and characteristics the person has. For example, “the black banker harassed by police while walking in casual clothes through his own well-off neighborhood...testif[ies] to the way a racialized social structure shapes racial experience and conditions meaning” (24).

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Race, as defined by racial theory/critical race theory, is a socially constructed category situated in specific temporal, geographic, political, and historical conditions. This definition unsettles the hegemonic discourse of race as a western scientific truth, reframing it as a shifting social marker that can be “formed, transformed, destroyed and reformed” (Module 2 Race as a Social Concept). Social construction theory as explained by Jackson and Penrose goes further, connecting race to nation and borders: “‘race' and nation are social constructions, the product of specific historical and geographical forces, rather than biologically given ideas whose meaning is dictated by nature” (Module 4 Social Construction Theory (SCT)). The American government historically conflated the two social constructs of race and nation in its creation of a white-only settler colony, drawing the boundaries of race and nation concurrently.

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Social construction is an event made by people from a specific society or culture, which exist only because people agreed to act like it exists for certain regulations. Therefore, a race is a socially constructed category, because it was made to give people from different parts of the world/worldwide an identity when they weren’t a specific “norm” identity. Major details of racial formation theory, where the different cultures, and society, including European culture, scientific theories, and even the time it took place. The racial project represents the race and characteristics of physical appearances, language, and thought. The social origin of racial classification comes from Europeans, slavery, and racial colonization.

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To understand race, ethnicity and minorities, we must first understand the definition of these terms and why we could solely define minorities in terms of gender, in certain instances. For instance, Race is a socially meaningful classification of groups of people that have or share similar biological traits, such as Caucasian, African American, Asian or Latino. Ethnicity is the shared culture between a race, which could apply but not limited to religion or cultural beliefs. In addition, we deal with groups of people not only by ethnicity and race but majority and minority.

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However, race changes based on time, location, and culture. The word race has various definitions. One definition is "The Only Race is the Human Race." The meaning this definition

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As sociologists define race and ethnicity, there is a distinction between race and ethnicity. Race is inherent and we cannot change it, but ethnicity needs to depend on individual preferences and people can classify ethnicities. Sociologists define races as social category by biological traits, included Asian who is a group of original people from Asia and White who is a group of original people from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. On the other hand, ethnicity is another social category by common language, religion, nationality, history, or another cultural factory. For instance, Chinese and Japanese are same race, but these two categories of people are different ethnicity.

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Race is a grouping of individuals who share lineage, and or physical characteristics. Ethnicity is more about culture, and tradition, people with common interests. Is there a relation between race and ethnicity? I think yes, to a point there is. The people you associate with, for the most part, are similar to you, share the same culture, and same interests.

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Racism occurs when a minority group is defined, negative characteristics are associated with them, and they are kept at a disadvantage to others. The most interesting aspect of racism is how people justify making their classifications. Race is a socially constructed term. This means people of a society made up race without any real backing or evidence to do so. One’s race is based mostly on their physical characteristics like skin color or hair type, or lineage.

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Race, nationality and ethnicity Race and ethnicity are seen as form of an individual’s cultural identity. Researchers have linked the concept of “race” to the discourses of social Darwinism that in essence is a categorization of “types” of people, grouping them by biological and physical characteristics, most common one being skin pigmentation. Grouping people based on their physical traits has lead in time to the phenomenon of “racialization” (or race formation), as people began to see race as more of a social construct and not a result or a category of biology.

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